Shields & Shades
by Adins
Summary: A pair of private detectives take on the case of their lives when their paths cross with an innocent wealthy heiress and and a mysterious silver crystal necklace. Written for Shitennou-dot-com's 2011 Ficathon. May be continued at some point in the future.


The bar was quiet. _Clean_ and quiet. Tends to be that way when there's still a solid hour before it opens, but the bartender and I have an arrangement: he lets me in early, I make sure the place keeps a clean rep. No back-alley mob business, no dregs, no _serious _winos; just a nice, clean, quiet bar to have a drink and spend a few late hours in abject misery over how the hell you're going to make rent this month on a freelance dick's salary.

In a few hours the place is going to liven up. The factories will let out and those hard-working hogs will take up every stool at the bar, talk about how rough their collective lives are, and then drink enough to forget why. Beer and bourbon will spill, the floor will get sticky, and the smoke will start to rise so thick that you'd swear the ceiling fans will be able to cut slabs of it out of the air like a Sunday roast. Voices will mingle and merge and get louder and louder and louder until the room just buzzes with a solid, steady din.

I hate the smoke and I hate the noise. Most of all I hate it when good booze gets wasted because some slack-jaw tin-flipper is too sauced to keep his business on the bar. That's why I avoid it. I'll be gone by then, my own business long behind me, my headache waning, and my plan for the next few days slowly solidifying in the back of my mind. I'll avoid the chaos altogether, but for right now it's quiet. And clean.

The door opens and a man steps in from the fiery ochre of evening in the city. He's a tall, good-looking man and I have no problem admitting the latter. If a man can't appreciate another man's stature, physique and poise then he's got no business feeling secure in his own vanity.

The man is tall and he likes to show it by wearing suits that are just a little too small for him. Not tight, mind you, but just short enough at the cuffs to show more of his ankles and wrists than would be considered fashionable in circles outside of our own. He wears a long jacket, but not quite a trench coat over top of everything. His suit is gray, but his jacket is green. Green like green onions. Green like baby vomit. Green like a_ bad_ jacket should be.

He has dark hair, a bit oily from coiffing himself up for a little too long. His eyes are dark as well. In fact, a good bit of him could be described as dark. Not sinister and not black, but dark in that way that certain parts of room that never get any direct sun are dark. His eyes are on me and the tall, dark, green-jacketed man is seated before me in just a few quick strides across the clean, quiet bar.

"Shields." I greet him over the edge of my rye.

"Shades." He answers curtly.

"We're not in high school anymore." I explain for the thousandth time.

"Doesn't matter." He snickers, "Nicknames stick."

"I don't wear sunglasses anymore."

"You did."

"I was photosensitive when I was a kid."

"You're still ugly as shit."

"Not what I meant, jackass."

The appearance of the bartender beside our table interrupts what would have likely escalated into a sophomoric shouting match-cum-fistfight.

"'Nother?" Mr. Andrew Arlington, proprietor of the Heart & Crown pub asks my half-empty whiskey. I only have to nod in reply and the glass is full again in moments.

"Mr. Shields." Andrew greets casually, "The usual?"

"Yeah, thanks Andy." My companion replies and mercifully removes his puke-green coat to drape it over the back of his chair.

The man seated across from me is Darien Shields, a poor, neglected son of a bitch whose parents must have dabbled in satanic cults to curse him with a handle like that. He's been my best friend since before the world began, or at least sometime in elementary school. We get on most of the time like an old, married couple only without the added benefit of steady sex. As much as I might think he's a good-looking guy I wouldn't want to see what's under his suit that's a little too short.

If I haven't mentioned it, my name is Nicholas Overholt. In case you were wondering, it's not my real name. The Nicholas part is, but Overholt just happens to be the name of a particular beverage that I frequent, so I stole it. My family name is Maxfield-Stanton, because sometime in the 1800's my ignorant ancestors figured having _two_ last names would prove that they were more socially capable than their inbred neighbors. Personally I find hyphens a bit pretentious and I think "Nicholas Rye Whiskey" sounds a bit too vaudeville, hence my final choice. I'm also distantly related to the somewhat infamous Union General Ambrose E. Burnside. Not that it matters, but it's a small fact that I like to share.

Darien and I are the proverbial fuck-ups of our neighborhood. We dropped out of school and tried to get rich quick on a half dozen ridiculous, ill-conceived schemes. We tried to scam our way into high society, we lived as basically hobos for a year or two, and eventually we settled on performing freelance work for anyone willing to pay us. At first we did anything: manual labor, factory work, driving, shopping, cooking, cleaning, dog walking, you name it.

About five years ago we were working at a junk yard when we found a dead body in the trunk of a beat up Chevy. When the cops swept it under the rug we called foul and used our wits and wiles to trace it back to a local crime ring. With actual evidence to leverage and a pair of hoods with nothing to lose as witnesses the city finally took the bosses to trial. And won. That started our reputation rolling and we established ourselves as private investigators. Any case, any time, any price is our motto. We're not in it for the fame and fortune anymore; we're just in it because it's what we do.

Unfortunately business has been slow. Slow enough that I'm being reminded of how little security there is in freelance work. Slow enough that the landlady's usually friendly reminders about the rent that get slipped under my door have degenerated into four-letter demands. Slow enough that I'm considering getting out of the game, cashing in all my chips, and doing the sensible thing like growing up and getting a real job.

"I got one on the line." Darien tells me up front.

"How much?"

"Five grand up front plus expenses."

Okay. My thoughts of stability and security are gone now. Five grand is a lot, but _plus_ expenses? Nobody covers expenses anymore. Hell, I thought that phrase was just a cliché from old detective novels.

"What's the job?" I ask hesitantly. Please don't say protection. Please don't say protection.

"Protection."

"Son of a bitch."

There's nothing I hate more than protection gigs. I'm not a bodyguard. I don't have police training and I don't like working around other people's schedules. That and the clients are usually elderly, paranoid shut-ins or spoiled silver-spoon bureaucrats who couldn't defend themselves from a thunderstorm.

"Here's our client." Darien presents me with a newspaper clipping of one Miss…

"… Serena Spencer?" I spit the name. She's dressed too well. She's got money and she's too young to have earned it herself which means daddy is fronting the bill which leads to the spoiled princess becoming a royal pain in my ass.

"She's hiring us to…" Darien starts.

"Woah. Wait." I stop him, "Hiring? You mean _might_ hire, right? I haven't agreed to anything yet."

"She's hiring us." Darien completely ignores me and reaches over to tap a certain paragraph in the article, "To protect _this_."

I read the paragraph. And I blink.

"A rock?"

"A crystal." Darien corrects me smarmily.

"A crystal _is_ a rock."

"So is a diamond."

"So it's a diamond?"

"No, it's a crystal."

Starting to see red now. Darien can be infuriating sometimes. It's no wonder he's single. And I spend more time with him than anyone else I know. It's no wonder I'm single…

"Look, its good money." Darien pitches, "Who cares if it's a rock?"

"Nobody." I pause for a sip of my whiskey while I let the weight of the word sink into my partner's occasionally thick skull, "Pays five grand to protect a rock. I don't care if it's the Hope Diamond."

"This isn't an ordinary crystal." Darien mentions, "It's the Silver Crystal."

"So what if it's silver?"

"It's not a crystal that happens to be silver." He says correctively, "It's _The_ Silver Crystal."

"Am I supposed to know what makes _The_ Silver Crystal special?"

"Don't you read the National Geographic's that are piled up by the toilet in your apartment?" Darien laughs.

"I read them mostly for the articles about Vikings."

"_The_ Silver Crystal is part of an ancient folk tale." Darien starts, purposely trying to sound as condescending as a schoolteacher who has been at his job for far too many years, "There are stories about it from all along the Silk Road, deep into China, and even Japan. It's supposedly caused the rise and fall of several kingdoms. Stories say it can do magic and can heal or destroy in equal measure."

"Fascinating." I say woozily. At least the booze is starting to work.

"The stories are too old to point to an origin." Darien continues blathering on, "Some folks say it came from a previous civilization before man. Some say it came from the heavens or fell down from the Moon."

"And the point is…?"

"There are a lot of people convinced that the stone this little Long Island girl has on her necklace is _The_ Mystical Silver Crystal." Darien reveals at last.

"Mystical?" I chuckle. More booze.

"Look, I'm not saying I believe this shit, I'm just filling you in." Darien starts getting huffy, "What it comes down to is this: I'm taking the case. We can either split the five grand or not."

He can certainly get to the point when he wants to. Wish he'd be more expeditious about it…

"Shades?"

I don't even hear the old nickname. The sound of greenbacks slapping off my hand has filled my ears. The sound of silver dollars falling in piles at my feet is jangling around in my head. I'm hearing cards shuffling at the casino, slot machines ringing, and martini glasses tinkling against each other.

"You meet this Spencer girl yet?" I ask.

"Just briefly." Darien replies with a swig of his gin -horrible pine-tree liquor that it is.

"She have a sister?"

"No." Darien grins menacingly, "But she does have a rather large, mannish, overprotective nursemaid that might be right up your alley."

"Nursemaid?" I ask ignoring the rest of the jab, "She's got to be, what? Nineteen? Twenty?"

"Nineteen." He clarifies, "And not really a nursemaid, more like a bodyguard, but she acts like a den mother. Her name is Lita. I didn't get a last name, but I don't think Amazons had those."

"Well played." I knock my glass against his again and both our drinks are gone in twin gulps.

"So are you in?" Darien asks expectantly. He'll never lose that enthusiasm. No matter how small or petty the job is, he's always up for it. It's that god damn spark people talk about sometimes. He's got it all over the place.

Serena Spencer stares at me off the page with huge blue eyes, gaudy pigtails and a silver stone around her neck big enough to anchor a small boat with. The article talks about folklore, pricelessness, a family jewel, and the dangers of owning such a rare and sought-after relic.

"Protecting a rock?" I ask.

"Protecting a rock." He replies.

Andrew refills our respective drinks and together we toast to the rock. The drinks are gone in seconds this time and my partner stands to leave. He dons his terrible green jacket again and grabs the tip of his fedora with two fingers.

"Shades."

I stand up beside him. The smoke is just starting to fill the room from all the drunks that meandered in during our conversation. I pick up my hat off the table from where it had been sitting and drop it down over my stupidly-long warlord's mane of mahogany hair.

"Shields."


End file.
